I know it’s a few years old, but this is really worth a read. It is sobering to consider what we have given up with our current capitalistic, competitive academic system. Universities are not businesses and shouldn’t be run that way. Academia is not a sport. We put far too much emphasis on winning and trying to get to the top of whatever list we have decided is important.
Peter Higgs, the British physicist who gave his name to the Higgs boson, believes no university would employ him in today’s academic system because he would not be considered “productive” enough.
The emeritus professor at Edinburgh University, who says he has never sent an email, browsed the internet or even made a mobile phone call, published fewer than 10 papers after his groundbreaking work, which identified the mechanism by which subatomic material acquires mass, was published in 1964.
He doubts a similar breakthrough could be achieved in today’s academic culture, because of the expectations on academics to collaborate and keep churning out papers. He said: “It’s difficult to imagine how I would ever have enough peace and quiet in the present sort of climate to do what I did in 1964.”
Source: Peter Higgs: I wouldn’t be productive enough for today’s academic system | Science | The Guardian
